Laparoscopy is a surgical procedure that involves the introduction of surgical instruments through small incisions in the outer layers of skin of a patient. Normally in a laparoscopic procedure, incisions are made to allow the introduction of two or more instruments. The advantage of laparoscopy over “open” surgical procedures is that smaller incisions are made, which enables the patient to recover more quickly than when a larger incision is required. Also, due to the reduced exposure of internal organs to airborne germs during a laparoscopic procedure, the odds of developing an internal infection is reduced.
Normally in laparoscopic procedures, trocars are first positioned through the skin to provide a channel through which other instruments can be inserted. For example, a laparoscopic video camera can be inserted through the trocars to view the patient's internal organs. Other instruments can be inserted as well to perform cutting, removing, stitching, and other surgical actions.
In order to practice the skills necessary to perform laparoscopic procedures or other types of surgical procedures, surgeons in training can sometimes use virtual reality systems, which have been developed in recent years to allow a trainee to practice on virtual patients in a virtual realm. With regard to virtual reality laparoscopic simulators, manipulation of physical handles of laparoscopic tools controls the virtual laparoscopic tools in the virtual realm. By manipulating the tools, the trainee can virtually insert instruments into the abdomen of a virtual patient and perform surgical procedures on the virtual patient.
The location of the physical handles of laparoscopic simulators is usually fixed. Also, the entry location through which the virtual instruments are introduced into the abdomen of the virtual patient is fixed. However, recent developments have been made in the field of laparoscopic simulators to free up each individual laparoscopic instrument. For instance, rather than placing the virtual instruments in a fixed position, manufacturers have created individual modules for each laparoscopic tool to allow placement of each module in any reasonable location.
This development allows a trainee to place tools in positions that may be more ergonomic or comfortable to the trainee. One of the shortcomings of these systems, however, is that the conventional laparoscopic simulators are not designed to correlate the location information of these modules in the physical realm with the location of the virtual instruments in the virtual realm. Therefore, virtual images of a number of laparoscopic tools may not match with the actual physical location of the modules in the real world, which can lead to confusion on the part of the trainee. Also, the trainee may experience an awkward situation where the physically manipulated tools interact with their physical environment in a way that is different from the tool interaction in the virtual realm. Thus, it may be evident that further developments can be made in the current state of the art to address these and other inadequacies of the conventional systems and methods.